The Tools of Engagement

Language has always fascinated me. Most times, I'm honored to be held in the thrall of words, but on occasion, I've been backhanded by bit of linguistic irony...and it smarts. The language of social networking repeatedly stings me. I wince when I hear "myspace" and I shudder to hear folk proclaiming the roll of "friends" collected on their page. I despair when I imagine a generation or two (or more) for whom the terminology of social networking holds no satirical bite.

The language purist in me roils at the sloppy labelling; we've no lack of appropriate words to describe online connections and connectors. In virtual as in physical realms, we encounter colleagues, acquaintances, onlookers, as well as friends and assorted loved ones. Why lump sundry gradations of social encounter together, and strain a word's utility with imprecision? Friendship, for me, has a degree of exclusivity, founded on a particular, intense, and mutually perceived symbiosis.

It's all about engagement, an intimate process, whether writ large or small. Engagement happens when we experience that moment of revealed symbiosis. Here is a writer who has penned what I have felt. Here is a painter who creates what I have seen. Here is a partner who acts on what I believe. Here is a librarian who hears what I seek, who finds what I need. The task of engagement is far more basic than deciding whether to create a library MySpace account. The challenge for libraries lies in learning to engage the public. The prudent library (and librarian) perfects the capacity and skill to engage the on-hand customer in genuine interchange, before casting about for the illusive virtual passerby.

Being There - MySpace Paradox

There is a deft bit of industry two-step called for in combining library service and marketing. Not surprisingly, the proficient and self-assured perform the choreography best. MySpace may be utilized by teens as a playground for practicing representation and tweaking response, but it is no place for faint or fumbling institutional posers. Libraries are not adolescents, and ought not don the trendy (but ill-fitting) garb of those whose legitimate developmental task it is to pose and parry.

It's unfortunate that "youth space" has gone virtual. In Platonic terms, adolescence is a time to exit the cave, to glimpse alone and with one's peers the awesome world without. It's a time to try to differentiate shadowed from genuine reality. Libraries have no place "fronting" in the MySpace developmental playground, but might stake a signpost to point the way toward genuine, non-mediated life experience. A link to the teen section of the library web page, which in turn provides information about events and volunteer opportunities, would suffice.

The amassing of "friends" should be eschewed; such social misrepresentation is a developmental disservice to young people. Libraries with vital, committed teen departments are far better served (and far better servants) in promoting face-to-face encounters and supporting non-virtual youth spaces. Let the teens buzz in their branded Murdochian cave, if they must, but let's help them transcend their shadow play, and discover and appreciate the tangible, transformative world of interaction with fully fleshed people and ideas.